Wednesday, April 14, 2010

"Cruising the Urban Inferno" screening at SIFF (Seattle Int'l Film Festival) this May!

May 26th, Weds @ SIFF Cinemahttp://www.siff.net/festival/prelaunch.aspx- more details to follow!

CRUISING THE URBAN INFERNO FROM THE 4th FLOOR

2009 / 3:57 minutes / featuring music by SEDAN

Cruising the Urban Inferno from the 4th Floor is a city portrait and stop-motion/time-lapse animation piece composed from over 2,000 digital photographs, shot over 4 days, from a 4th floor room at the Patricia Inn, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Each photo was taken by hand (rather than remote), with a point and shoot camera which involved physically maneuvering the camera during various shots to achieve particular visual effects such as swirling and superimposition. Editing with an intention to simulate movement was performed in-camera. Although a couple of sequence sections were shifted during the final video editing process, they are presented chronologically by day and none of the images are repeated.

“Cruising the urban inferno” is taken from Susan Sontag's essay, Melancholy Objects, and is in reference to Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur, or one who voyeuristically strolls through city streets. The area in which I was staying is an intersection between Chinatown and Gastown, on the edge of the downtown core, and home to many non-profit organizations that provide assistance to the drug users, sex workers, impoverished, and homeless who congregate or reside there. The street and alleyway I have documented in particular feature some of these individuals, including needle exchange volunteers. With this in mind, and careful observation, the viewer can glimpse various interactions and activities that are characteristic of and commonplace in this particular section of Vancouver.

SEDAN is Danny Sasaki on drums and Scott Seckington on pianowww.myspace.com/sedansedan

about the artist...

Hi! My name is Bridget Irish - I'm an artist who lives and works in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to making short films and videos, my art practice includes photography, performance, installation, visual art, music, writing, and creative gardening.

Some of my current projects include photo postcards, creating "experimental films" through knitting and needle-felting on fabric, and building on a series of short videos I refer to as "photo-mations." Most of the videos in this body of work are composed of over a thousand photographs each, shot manually, edited in-camera, and feature an animated panoramic portrait of a city or landscape.

My most recent public art piece is a photo-mural covered city bench in downtown Olympia called "Match Game." The mural consists of 28 different pairs of photos featuring a variety of local sites and subjects, mixed up in the mural so one can match the pairs.

I have screened, performed and lectured at various venues and universities across the nation, such as 911 Media Arts, On the Boards, San Francisco Art Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, San Francisco Cinematheque, UCLA, Tacoma Art Museum, Reed College, Artist's Television Access, William & Mary, Women Make Movies, Tollbooth Gallery, UC San Diego, The Art Institute of Chicago, Saint Martin's University, and have screened internationally in Guyana, Paris, and Australia.

I have curated and juried film and video programs for Ladyfest 2000 (Olympia), Progression Project One Conference (Boise State University), Homo A Go Go, CoCA Seattle, the Olympia Film Festival's CINE-X Series, Shot to the Face, and The Evergreen State College Gallery. I have taught in the areas of new media studies and video and film production at the San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, The Olympia Film Society, The Evergreen State College, and Seattle University.